


Kapitel Zwei komma Fünf

by JoCarroll



Series: Princess Tutu: The Untold Story [3]
Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28416183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoCarroll/pseuds/JoCarroll
Summary: Bonus chapter of the Princess Tutu:  The Untold Story series, that falls between Kapitel des Kukens and Kapitel des Jugenvogels which will be dropping its first chapter on January 3rd 2021!  This is not a standalone story, rather a foreshadowing of things to come.
Relationships: Ahiru | Duck/Fakir (Princess Tutu), Mytho/Rue (Princess Tutu)
Series: Princess Tutu: The Untold Story [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/912078
Kudos: 6





	Kapitel Zwei komma Fünf

_**The Well of the World's End** _

Fear clogged the man’s throat as he sprinted down the Rue Azais, brushing heedlessly past many a startled pedestrian, and thumping one hapless bicycle messenger right off his mount to go sprawling into the street. On any other day the man would have stopped to apologize profusely for his rudeness. He would have picked up the bag of shopping he’d knocked out of an old woman’s hand. He would have righted the man’s bicycle and ensured that he was uninjured. On any other day… but not today.  
Skidding around a corner onto Rue du Mont Cenis, his heart threatened to pound right out of his ribcage as he forced his legs to keep up their breakneck speed. Automobiles slammed on their horns as he darted briefly into traffic to avoid a street vendor’s booth. He bounced off one car’s bumper and rolled off the bonnet of another before dodging around a blaring lorry. If he was hurt, he didn’t notice. He kept running.  
_I shouldn’t have left her,_ he thought in panic as he sprinted. He’d known it the morning he’d abandoned their shared bed. It was a mistake. It was always a mistake. A mistake his heart kept making. He’d thought if he left her this time the curse wouldn’t take her. If he voluntarily gave up the small slice of happiness he’d found, she would be safe. The irony of it now was that she would have been safer if he stayed.  
Darting to the left down Rue Norvins, the man charged forward, praying he wasn’t too late. Praying he was in the right place. He hadn’t seen her in almost six years now, but he’d never been far away. When she’d moved from Bavaria, where no doubt the memories of their time together were too bitter to remain, he had followed. He’d known it was a mistake, and he couldn’t help himself. He’d stayed close in case she’d ever need him.  
_But not close enough.  
_He’d felt it in his bones this morning when he woke from a nameless nightmare. He could hear her screams, feel her pain. She had been found. Somehow _she had been found!_ And now he wouldn’t be fast enough to save her.  
Careening into her tenement building, he took the stairs three at a time, climbing the four flights up to her flat. His enemy had been here. He could sense the malice embedded in the very walls, and he knew he should be cautious. He should be careful. But right now he didn’t have it in himself to care. Not when she was in danger.  
It came as no surprise when he burst into her flat and she turned knowing eyes on him, her lips tilting up in the smile she’d always saved only for him. There was no accusation in those eyes, there was no blame. There should have been.  
Falling to his knees, he skidded in the pool of her blood and fumbled uselessly at the stab wounds that littered her torso. “Emilienne,” he hissed, already knowing it was too late. There was no way he could save her. That didn’t stop him from trying.  
“He said, he couldn’t let you subvert your curse,” she spoke brokenly, closing cold fingers around his uselessly flailing digits.  
Tears stung his eyes, blurring her beautiful face.  
“He said, immortality comes at a price, and it wasn’t fair that you hadn’t paid.”  
There was no point in asking who _he_ was. Rage burned in his belly. There was only one man who could have done this. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, stroking back her raven hair. “I’m so, so sorry.”  
She responded with a beatific smile. “I’m not,” her voice was a whispered murmur now as she reached for his face. “I got to see you again. And even if it was only for a summer’s day, I had you, my love. And you gave me the greatest gift of all.”  
Cold dread seeped into his bones at her words. He’d forgotten in his panic at finding her so broken. He’d forgotten about the child. _Their_ child. “Where is he?” he croaked as sudden new terror spiked within him. If that bastard had taken the boy—“Where is our son?”  
“No son,” she breathed, the light fading from her eyes and her grip on his hand growing weak. Her words froze him in place with fear, thinking his enemy had stolen their child. But then the strangest expression crossed over her features. “You have a daughter, my love… Ari—aaah…” The last syllable drew out in a final breath as her life escaped her.  
The world stopped. The breath in his lungs seized, and everything around him narrowed down. His vision tunneled until all he could see was her beautiful face frozen in death. Flecks of blood stained her porcelain skin, globs of it tangled in her hair. Grey eyes stared sightlessly toward the flat’s single window streaming weak sunlight through dusty curtains. Her blood soaked through the knees of his trousers, soaked into the hardwood, soaked into his soul to mingle with the blood of all those whose lives and deaths he would be held accountable for if ever he found his way to eternity’s gates. And all for what? A curse he’d damned himself to as the price of foolish arrogance? For want of a question that went unasked? His hands curled into white-knuckled fists as depthless grief morphed into boundless rage. It never got easier. It didn’t seem to matter how many times he found himself here, it _never_ got easier.   
Throwing back his head, he roared. “Why!” _Why her, why now? Why couldn’t the fates make him suffer without hurting her? Why!?  
_“Mère?”  
The small voice brought him back into himself and he whipped around just in time to stop the little waif from witnessing the full horror of what had happened here, though there was no disguising her mother’s blood that spattered his clothes. She was standing in the dingy doorway that led through to the flat’s only bedroom. The hem of her white nightgown dragged on the floor, and she clutched a tattered stuffed toy to her chest. Big eyes stared at him from a tiny cherub face.  
“Qu’est-il arrivé à maman?”  
Swallowing hard he adjusted his voice and language for her, tempering his rage and grief into gentleness. “Ta mère—” he broke off. He had no idea what to say, how to explain. He was too shocked to behold the truth of what Emilienne had said. They didn’t have a son, they had a _daughter._ He had never fathered a daughter, but as he stared at her there was no mistaking that she was _his._ He could feel their connection, an invisible tie frayed by the years they’d spent apart, by his absolute absence until this very moment. It strengthened between them, anchoring in his chest and binding them inextricably together.  
“Père?” her soft voice was filled with awe and… hope.  
Throat closing up, all he could do was nod as he drank in her shock of red hair and bright blue eyes. Eyes that were a match for his own, and hair a shade or two lighter than his mother’s had been. Gods above, how long had it been since he recalled that? He couldn’t answer her question. He couldn’t force the words past his numb lips to tell her that her mother had died. Not now. Later he would. Later he’d explain. Later he’d find the words. Somehow.  
“Je suis ton père,” he ground out through a throat worn raw with grief. “Je te ramène à la maison.”  
She blinked up at him in child’s confusion. “C’est la maison.”  
Unable to say anything more, he lifted her into his arms and turned his back on the bloody room. He was careful to keep her face averted from the grisly sight behind them as he left the little flat, descending the stairs much slower than he’d climbed them. He seemed to feel every single one of his years in his bones as he stepped out onto the street with the little girl tucked trustingly against him.  
He turned blindly when he hit street level, carrying the girl anywhere as long as it was _away._ He should have been paying better attention. The gunshot took him completely by surprise. Falling to his knees, he almost didn’t hear the little girl screaming through the roaring in his ears. Despite the blinding pain in his back and chest, he set her down gently.  
“Père!” she screamed, clutching at him.  
“Cours,” he commanded her, pushing her away from himself. Frightened blue eyes looked up at him, full of tears, and it was unclear if the pain he felt was the breaking of his heart or the bullet in his chest. “Cours!” he ordered again. Bless her, the little girl ran.  
Through the chaos that surrounded him now, a familiar figure strode forward. “What is the saying?” his old enemy asked as he grinned down. “Ah yes, hail and farewell.”  
The world was greying out around him. The face of his enemy disappeared, and he couldn’t even be sure if the bastard was there at all. And then another face appeared, one strange and shockingly familiar at once. A seed of hope took root in his chest at its appearance, and only one thought made itself manifest on his lips. “Protect… my soul.”

***

The light of the setting sun falling over Goldkrone Towne lit the buildings up in burnished bronze beneath a twilight sky fading from azure to a soft velvety navy. Aria stared out over it from the tower of the Nächstenliebe near Kyron’s smithy as if seeing the city for the first time with new eyes. It was quaint and beautiful. Peaceful. It didn’t look like a place where a mythic battle had raged less than twenty-four hours ago. To her mind buildings should be levelled, streets in ruin, bodies and blood littering the cracked paving stones.  
_That’s what it looked like fifteen years ago.  
_ Before the curse.  
Since waking up this morning with all her memories and her heart restored, her mind felt as muddled as an artist’s used palette. True and false memories swam around in her head, twisting and untwisting themselves. Things Drosselmeyer had written to fill in a non-existent past sparred with her precious memories of growing up in Mytho’s care—even those faint and faraway impressions of earliest childhood when other faces she barely recalled held warm regard. Everything felt familiar and unfamiliar at once, and it was no wonder she’d struggled with identity since being thrown into the storyteller’s twisted fiction. The joke of it all was that she was still struggling. Because somewhere between being an orphaned waif in Paris, and a madman’s puppet, her completely mundane and _normal_ life was upturned by magic.  
Real magic.   
Not that fantasy, fairytale, sword and sorcery stuff cluttering up the yellowed pages of well-thumbed tomes. Not the carefully curated and altogether false artifacts of some fascist regime hell bent on world domination. No, this was the kind of magic that spun worlds on their axes, overturned civilizations, sent continents to war… brought the dead back to life. The kind of magic so powerful it was sacred, secret, closely guarded by those who had inherited its wonderful and terrible gifts. Those of the blood.  
Everyone knows the story, or versions of it at least. The tale of a sacred cup, a sacred sword, a king and his knights on their holy quests. Those tales were scattered across Europe like wildflowers, blooming up every century with new and fantastic shades. Every generation strained to tell the tale over and again. Nobody knew that it was true. That every generation saw a new cohort of knights sworn to the heirs of the Undying King. Heirs like Mytho, Prince of the line of Godfrey. Knights like Kyron twelfth knight of the third line of Gottfried.  
She squeezed her eyes shut painfully. _Last knight of the line of Gottfried._ The others were all gone now. Those that were sworn to Mytho, and those that were sworn to Mytho’s father before him. Even the council circle was gone—elders who’d left the sword and taken up the mantle of leadership. Those that remained were the old, the young, the injured, or the few council guardians who had survived Rue’s attack upon their chambers. Rue hadn’t been in her right mind, of course. She hadn’t been in her mind at all. Her father, von Rothbart, _Drosselmeyer,_ had compelled her to butcher the circle with a cursed murder of crows.  
_Drosselmeyer…  
_ Who was he really? He’d introduced himself as von Rothbart, an elder of the first line of Godfrey who’d lived in seclusion for many long years until the war had prompted him to rejoin the world. She knew that was a lie. Everything he’d ever told them was a lie. Fakhir showed them the many books, all penned under different names, going back for decades. And those were just the ones they knew about. The man had been a chameleon, hiding his identity behind aliases, and nom de plumes.  
“He’s dead now,” she reminded herself harshly. “Dead, dead, dead.”  
Somehow, her words left her little comfort.  
Shadows began creeping up the streets as the last glowing rays of the sun died down to a rosy line that softened, darkening to the color of blood before fading out entirely. In the darkest hours of twilight, soft lights winked on here and there throughout town. People were slowly waking up from the Raven’s curse. Likely dazed, confused, going about their evenings in a stupor. Tomorrow they’d need explanations. They’d need guidance. _They’ll need a leader.  
_ She hoped Mytho was up for it.  
Shadows had lurked in the prince’s eyes all day. The Mytho she knew would have insisted they set out right after breakfast to reclaim the lives that were paused by the raven’s curse fifteen years before, exhausted or not. But he hadn’t put up any resistance when the group came to the consensus to spend the day recuperating at Kyron’s. None of the townspeople would be moving about either, there was no rush. Aria feared his lack of motivation to at least find out what they could of the war which had been raging across continents before their unscheduled curse was indicative of a much deeper issue. She just wasn’t sure what name to put on it. After all, she’d glimpsed similar shadows in his eyes when he’d returned from the battlefields of Europe.  
Stars began to wink on in the sky like so many wishes just waiting to be made. Light peeled away from the dome overhead, revealing the furthest reaches of the universe. A deep well of mystery rose above her, and from her place in the tower she felt as she though she stood on the very precipice of it. She stood at the end of the world gazing out into the endless abyss of eternity. Reaching up, her fingers fumbled for a moment to clutch at a necklace she no longer wore. The ruby pendant was gone. The silver locket was gone now too. Her searching digits closed on nothing and she pressed a tight fist against her heart.  
Aria turned her face up to the cold stars overhead, unsure what exactly she should be wishing for. _This was supposed to be the happy ending, wasn’t it?_ So why didn’t it feel complete? Shivering, she hugged her arms around her waist and reached deep, trying to suss out the source of the unease plaguing her. It was elusive, this worry that gnawed at the edges of her awareness. Perhaps it was a simple matter of too many years of war followed by too many years of curse. A side effect of dying.   
Or maybe not.  
Because no matter how she turned it over in her mind, she shouldn’t belong in this world of magic and mystery. Not really. She was a nobody nothing who happened to be lucky enough to be adopted by a prince. Stretching out her fingers, she stared down at her pale knuckles, knowing it wasn’t Drosselmeyer’s story that gave Princess Tutu her wings. No. That power awakened _before_ the curse. And only those of the blood should have it.  
_So who the hell am I?  
_ “Aria?”  
Fakhir’s voice echoed up the tower stairs, followed by the low thud of his footsteps. The weight of his tread belied his weariness. Normally the ever-graceful dancer and knight would move soundlessly.  
“Up here,” she called down, not wanting him to worry. When she’d crept away from the smithy earlier, he had been reclining back in one of Kyron’s comfortable chairs by the fire, eyes closed in something resembling sleep, as Uzura braided red ribbons into his hair. They’d needed a day of peace, a day to rest. Except her. She felt like she’d been asleep for fifteen years and had only just woken up.  
Fakhir joined her at the crown of the tower, and she noted with a suppressed smile that the ribbons were gone from his dark locks. “I’ve been looking for you.”  
The gentle chiding to his tone was new. Something had shifted between them and she wasn’t sure what it was. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I just needed—” _out. To clear my head. To make sense of the mess in my mind._ Unthinking, she reached out and curled her fingers around his. All at once some of the noise thrashing in her head quieted and she sighed.  
Fakhir seemed surprised, his eyes widening at her sudden show of affection, but he didn’t spurn her touch. Instead, he tightened his fingers over hers and did not let go. They stood there for a long moment, watching the sky change from bluish black to a deep velvety ebony studded with brilliant twinkling diamonds. Out on the horizon, a golden moon began to rise, lighting up the horizon in the hazy way that spoke of an oncoming storm. Aria could almost feel the promise of that storm in her soul.  
Turning away from the view she caught Fakhir’s gaze and saw the star-studded sky reflected back from the dark depths of his eyes. The boundless well above her seemed caught up in them as if all the answers to all her questions were right there, locked behind that inky veil, and all she wanted for was the key.  
The moment stretched between them in silence, their eyes locked as the stars spun slowly overhead and the moon made her ponderous way over the river of night. Moving slowly, Fakhir swept a wayward curl off her forehead and tucked it behind her ear, his fingers lingering a moment or two longer than necessary at the corner of her jaw.   
“I heard you,” she murmured, not knowing where the words were coming from. “When I thought it was over, when I was ready to give up, I heard your voice as if you were right there beside me. I heard you encouraging me on.”  
A ghost of a smile appeared and disappeared so quickly on his face she thought she might have imagined it.   
“Why me?” she wondered. It was one of those questions that had plagued her. One of the few she could actually give voice to. “Why could you write for me?” _And not for him?  
_ His lips pulled into a frown and he glanced away from her, taking with him all the starlight in his eyes. “I don’t know.” With a sigh he ran a hand through his hair, “Does it matter?”  
Aria wrung her hands together. “I think it does.”  
He nodded, staring out over the town for a long moment. “Then we’ll find out,” he vowed. He turned back and offered a small smile, “But not tonight.”  
“But—”  
“One day,” he cut her off, “We’ve been saving the world for weeks now without rest, Aria. Let’s give ourselves one day off before we go searching for a new mystery.”  
She sighed and nodded ruefully. “It just feels so strange,” she murmured. “Like it’s over, but it never really ended.”  
Lifting dark eyes to an equally dark sky, Fakhir gave a noncommittal grunt of assent. Green eyes so deep they looked black in certain instances, seemed to swallow up every last pinprick of light shining down from above. “A chapter,” he murmured. “That’s all that ended. One chapter, and now we open the next one. As long as life burns, that is the way of it.”  
She shivered at his words.   
“Come on,” he murmured, shaking off the strange mood that had descended between them. “It’s getting too dark to be up here. Whatever might be coming next, we’ll face it tomorrow.”  
_Together.  
_ Aria breathed a small sigh. Whatever might be coming, they’d face it together. All of them. Rue, Mytho, Fakhir, Kyron… even Uzura. Confidence leaked in around the edges of her ennui. As long as they were all together, there wasn’t anything they couldn’t face. She smiled up at him, “Of course.”

***

 _Tap-tappity-tap-tap-tap._ Uzura trundled along, tunelessly rapping on her drum without rhythm as she wandered the dark streets of Goldkrone Towne looking for Fakhir and Duck. They weren’t anywhere around the smithy, so she’d started turning corners at random, following the thumpity thump of her own drum as she toddled along. The streets were quiet, clean, and full of shadows and secrets as she wandered aimlessly wherever her feet could carry her.  
“Oh,” she stopped as a figure loomed out of the mist ahead of her, craning her neck to look up, up, up into the night at the shadowy face. Down to her deepest sinews, Uzura felt a strange resonance at the stranger’s appearance, and couldn’t help but gape up at him in awe. “Who are you zura?” she wondered aloud.  
“A traveler,” the man answered simply in a dark timbre that seemed to resonate from the earth itself.  
“What’s a traveler zura?”  
A chuckle answered her innocent words. “Something I doubt this town has seen in many a long year.” He sighed then, sounding decidedly forlorn.  
Uzura cocked her head at him. “Why are you so sad zura?”  
“I am waiting,” he answered.  
She frowned, her little brow creasing as she mulled over his words. “Waiting makes you sad?”  
“When you have been waiting as long as I have, yes.”  
This seemed to make sense, and she wanted to ask how long he’d been waiting, but a different question pushed its way to the tip of her tongue. “What are you waiting for?”  
“A question,” the stranger sighed.  
Her frown deepened. Her whole life was questions, maybe she could ask it and help this stranger out? “Wh—”  
Before she could pursue that thought, the stranger spoke again, his eyes shining down at her from the shadows like two glowing blue orbs of foxfire. “It isn’t yours to ask, little one,” he spoke almost kindly. “The one who’s meant to ask it isn’t ready. Not yet.” And then softer, almost as if the words were not meant for her ears. “And time is running out.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading my series and for all your kind words! It's been something of a crazy, crazy year (for everybody) that has definitely interfered with the writing and release schedule that I had mapped out in my head for this series. Moving forward, starting with the first chapter release on January 3rd, I'm planning to have biweekly chapter releases for Kapitel des Jugenvogels throughout 2021. The final chapter of the story, Kapitel des Schwann will begin release in 2022.


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